


Chur Pitat (Chur Tracyn)

by BowAndDagger



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anakin Skywalker is Not a Jedi, Anakin is ten years older than in canon, Angst, Fighting, M/M, Pre-Fix-It, Slave Uprising, Tatooine Is Free, a bit of, bounty hunter/bounty - relationship, but it's mostly fluff, but not really, consensual fighting?, except the hunter isn't really trying to take the bounty in, he was never a jedi more like, he's the only aged-up character in the fic, if that's a thing, more play-fighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:35:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27605002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BowAndDagger/pseuds/BowAndDagger
Summary: Under the Rain (Under Fire)In which Anakin is born ten years earlier and is nineteen when the Naboo Invasion happens. Now, at thirty-one, he is one of the successful leaders of a slave revolution on Tatooine and the tide of the Clone Wars rests - unknowingly - on his shoulders.
Relationships: Jango Fett/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 3
Kudos: 135





	Chur Pitat (Chur Tracyn)

**Author's Note:**

> Title in Mando'a
> 
> **There is a fifteen years age gap between the main characters. Jango is 46 and Anakin is 31. If that squick you, don't read!**
> 
> (It was supposed to be 500 words max, where did the worldbuilding/backstory come from? Also, it went in a totally different direction than what was planned.)
> 
> **(Also don't read the end notes before the fic if you don't want to be spoiled.)**
> 
> Enjoy!

It’s raining.

That realisation wouldn’t have been surprising if it wasn’t Tatooine. It only rained on that dustball during the monsoon and, even so, it only lasted two weeks. Anakin scowls at the ground. The rain has barely started so each drop only makes a tiny cloud of dust rise off of the ground; the sand is still too hot from the noon suns to soak up the water.

The last monsoon was three months ago. Tatooine’s annual cycle shouldn’t have another rainy season for at least eleven to twelve other months. What is going on?!

He raises his head, glaring at the overcast sky. Water out-of-season means the economy will be going down and all the moisture farmers on the planet are going to suffer for it. Anakin may not be that fond of his step-father but his mother is, and Owen is a good man and still lives with his father. He didn’t risk his life in the pod-races to free himself and his mom just for her to fall back into slavery because of financial diffilculties brought on by a monsoon ahead of schedule.

Anakin growls, kicking at the sand in anger. It rises like the mist he saw on Kashyyyk a year ago; fine and translucide and alien in the middle of a desert planet. He notes distantly its eerie beauty but he's too distracted to fully appreciate it.

This must be a ploy. The Hutts or the Separatists or the Republic trying to take back the planet when Anakin has just succeeded in liberating it from Hutt’s control, he’s sure of it. Jabba is not even two days dead and they’re already striking back.

He doesn’t care about the Civil War or the Clones War as the Core-Worlders have taken to call it. One of the first things he did when he freed himself - after he got rid of his and his mom’s chips - was to enroll into different classes; anything he could enter he did so. If there is one lesson he has to retain from his years in chains it’s that power makes you free. And knowledge is only one of the many forms of power.

He learned many things during those first months, in-between creating his own mechanic shop and plotting a slave revolt. One of them had been a realization: things almost always happen in a pattern and one of those repeating patterns had been the Sith.

The Separatists are led by a Sith and that alone makes him wary of them even if, personally, he sees nothing wrong with leaving a type of government for another. Being part of the Republic is a choice those planets had made years, if not centuries, ago and they had the right to choose otherwise when it didn’t work for them. And while the Republic is the most stable and influential government around, it has no rights to deny them the right to leave. Plus, the Republic has a slave army and that alone makes Anakin want to rip it to shred if only to free the clones. And the Jedi along with them if what he’s hearing of the front lines and the Core are more than rumours. It’s not surprising nothing is done for the clones: nothing was done or is being done for the slaves, even for those within Republic space.

So Anakin, along with several of his people, would probably turn towards the Separatists for protection over the Republic. And if it wasn’t for the Sith leading it and their dubious strategies, they would have done so.

A snort escapes him even as he makes his way towards his new base within Jabba’s ex-Palace. For all that the Separatists claim to fight for their people and against corruption, their main strategies tend to be amassing plenty of riches, letting their poor population fend for themselves and use their people as meat-shields and cannon fodder.

Which leads him right back at his suspicions: a ploy. Either from the Hutts or the two sides entangled into the war. Tatooine sits on the intersection of several Hutt-controlled Hyperlanes which are important for the war-effort and whoever controls them controls most of the supply lines in the Outer Rim. So no, Anakin wouldn’t be surprised if someone makes a power grab just after Jabba’s death and while the Freed’s government is still attempting to get its feet under it.

But still...raining? How and why? He gets the abundance of water to have the less-than stable economy fail but… How? Water doesn’t magically appear out of nowhere.

Kitster waves at him from where he’s supervising the repair to the eastern wall, Anakin waves back and shrugs when his friend casts a questioning glance outside. The blond signs at him with the slave symbol for patience and research before he continues on his way to his temporary quarters. He needs to fetch Artoo if he wants to be able to scan the system.

A smile pulls at his lips. R2-D2 remains to this day his best acquisition and friend. Anakin had been nineteen when the astromech had rolled into his life, accompanied by a jedi and a young teenage girl. They’d been looking for a piece to repair the Naboo Cruiser they came on and had only Republican credits to pay for it. While Anakin didn’t mind being paid in credits - he did need some to help the slaves in the Mid-Rim and the Core - he couldn’t accept so much at once, not without risking his whole business. However, he had a need for an astromech.

After a bit of negotiation - R2 had access to sensitive information and they needed the droid on the ship and for the trip back to Naboo since he had some of the codes necessary to help free the planet - Anakin had been left with a hefty sum of money as a guarantee. A few weeks later and that money had been exchanged for Artoo.

Usually, Anakin would have never agreed to such an exchange: there were too many risks of the buyers retracting from the deal with no warning, leaving him with a pile of Republican credits he wouldn’t know what to do with. But he’d reached to that sense inside him, the one he’d always had which had saved his life and the situation countless times, and he’d know the girl would do everything to honour the deal, so he’d agreed. The man with her - a Jedi, if the lightsaber hidden by the poncho hadn’t been stolen - had looked at him in askance then and seemed to want to talk to him but the approaching sandstorm had derailed him.

The droid turned out to be a little spitfire, right up Anakin’s alley, who hadn’t been particularly pleased to be bought. It had considerably warmed up to him once it met C-3PO and learned of Anakin’s aims.

Of course, it helped that Anakin didn’t mind Artoo going back to Naboo from time to time. Those frequent return trips had led to Anakin and Padmé striking up a strong friendship, the young teen proving to be willing to go to great lengths, as both a Queen and then later as a Senator, to help the Freedom Trail.

Nowadays, if R2-D2 wasn’t on Naboo or with C-3PO, he was with Anakin, plotting with him different slave uprisings. His help will be necessary to scan the system to understand where this out-of-season rain comes from.

  
-_-_-_-_-_-_-  
  


As he nears his quarters, a shiver of anticipation travels down his spine. Without stopping, he analyses the feeling. It’s not a warning per say but Anakin can still feel the tension rise. Around him the world vibrates, giggles, as if giddy for a fight. There’re the usual scents of oil and metal that accompany him everywhere he goes but now, there’s also the scent of jet-pack fuel, faint but present.

The smirk that pulls at his lips has an edge of teeth. He throws open the door to his quarters with no hesitation and slams the door closed before he’s even fully inside.

There is no warning, there’s never one.

The door is still partially opened when Anakin ducks to the side, the blaster shot skims the top of his left ear but does not strike him. He spins on one foot, the other rising for a kick. He makes contact with an armoured ankle and is quick to use the leverage to trip his attacker.

At the same moment he blindly seizes the utility belt of his assailant and pulls, throwing him off balance. There’s a mechanised grunt, a bitten off swear and Anakin smirks, going with the movement.

He ends up sat astride an armoured waist, one hand pinning the warrior’s shoulder to the ground, the other absently twisting a wrist to avoid being stabbed.

“Really?” He asks with a raised eyebrow, unimpressed. “Is this how you say ‘hello’ after almost two years of nothing?”

Despite the helmet, he can feel the glare. He glares back, eyes narrowed and teeth barred. He’s not going to admit he was worried but… But the beginning of the war had marked a distinct lack of contact and millions of soldiers wearing Jango’s face. That had been quite a shock.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

When the rumour had begun to circulate the worry had threatened to drown him.

‘ _Jango Fett is dead_ ’.

The new had been rather unwelcome. Never before had Anakin felt the urge to hurt the messenger, so to speak. The hapless drunk smuggler gossiping in Mos Eisley’s cantina hadn’t quite known what to do with the mechanic crowding him into the bar to question him. A few lacking answers later and he was in a full-blown panic, sending feelers in the galaxy. If Jango was dead then that meant Boba was either dead or alone. And Anakin was far too attached to the little hellion to leave him an orphan and alone in a galaxy that often only knew how to be cruel.

When news had reached him of a familiar silver-clad bounty hunter laying low on some no-name moon in the Mid-Rim, there had been no word for the relief he had felt. Which had quickly been replaced by the urge to throttle the older man when he finally managed to concentrate on the other news of the war.

Namely the _kriffing slave army_. An army wearing Jango’s face because they are Jango’s clones. The same clones who, by both Mandalorian and Slave customs, are considered Jango’s sons. And Jango let them be enslaved by the Republic.

At first, Anakin had thought Jango hadn’t been willing. He could totally see the Mando agreeing to be cloned to regain his lost family but to let them be used by the Republic? The same government that signed the _Haat Mando’ade_ ’s death warrant? That lied to the Jedi, used them, an Order of _peacekeepers_ , as executioners? No, Anakin couldn’t see it. And yet.

Tatooine is a hive of scum and villainy. It survives on suffering, spite and gossip. It may take time but nothing that happens in the galaxy stays unknown for long in the Desert. Rumours of Jango Fett, of the army he cloned and raised, of his stance against the Jedi during the First Battle of Geonosis were quick to reach his ears.

So, while Anakin is glad to have Jango alive in front of him and with his presence, the knowledge of Boba being safe somewhere, he’s also extremely pissed off at him.

  
-_-_-_-_-_-_-

He’s so busy reminiscing he almost doesn’t feel the body under him tensing. He jerks back just in time to avoid being head-butted. Jango uses the opportunity to push him back further and Anakin ends up sprawled on his back, a familiar and much missed weight covering him. He grunts and wriggles in vain; when the Mando doesn’t want to move, nothing will make him.

One of his hands is pinned between their bodies, already going numb, the other is still keeping an armoured wrist at bay. Jango’s voice is muffled, the external mic cut off, but Anakin doesn’t need to hear it to feel the smug chuckle shaking his body. He scowls harder.

If he can’t use his upper body, he can use his legs.

He twists, legs parting to close his knees around Jango’s ribs, sparkling an heat-spice feeling from the older man who releases a bit of tension. He lets himself go limp, feigning surrender and falling languid under the armour. An ankle at the small of the Mando’s back is enough to draw his body towards his own.

Jango follows, unresisting, his unrestrained hand coming to clutch at Anakin’s nap, the familiar gesture almost enough to make the younger man forget the next step in his plan. Instead, he lets himself savour the pressure for a heartbeat before striking.

The only warning Jango gets is the sensation of thighs muscles suddenly tensing before Anakin uses his knees to push him. At the same moment, his head rears back for a head-butt of his own. He doesn’t go for the head - he’s reckless but not stupid enough to strike beskar with his unprotected skull - but for the vulnerable throat.

Usually, Anakin is not above using his teeth during a fight - and right this moment he really wants to - but not against Jango. Not when teeth against flesh is always a prelude to other, more pleasurable, activities between them. And right now, he has a point to make.

He releases the wrist he’s still holding, hips twisting to the side, throwing off and away the weight on them, and pounces. His hands immediately go for the helmet’s controls on the side, disengaging the external lock, and yanking it off. Just in time to hear the last of Jango’s wheeze from the blow to his throat and hearing a second one when Anakin slams his back to the floor.

Anakin takes advantage of the older man’s breathless daze to wriggle on top of him. Sitting on his chest, knees on each side of Jango’s arms to keep them pinned, he sinks his hands into soft dark curls.

Without the barrier of beskar, his sixth sense swirls around the Mando. The armour is cold under him but the man is anything but. Anakin shivers when the heat of Jango’s thoughts hit him and coils around the answering warmth deep in his chest. Gods, he had missed the man!

He pulls slowly on the hair between his fingers, more pressure than pain, to bend his neck backward in an uncomfortable but not harmful angle. He meets dark brown eyes blown wide with adrenaline and desire with an impassive stare.

“I,” he stresses slowly, “am cross with you.”

Jango only huffs at him, not feeling particularly threatened despite their position. In fact, his thoughts get more lustful by the second. Anakin swats at him, peeved.

“I’m serious.”

The man smirks at him and Anakin scowls back. Really, the man has no right to feel this smug!

“I didn’t expect anything else, cyare.”

He grits his teeth. As Jango is perfectly aware, using that particular endearment can calm him down real quick. But, right now, he’s two days fresh from a fight he spent most of life preparing for, there is an out-of-season monsoon that threatens their fragile economy and there is an army of slaves who, for all intents and purposes, is made of his future sons since they are the clones of the only man he has ever considered marrying! So, no, he’s not in the mood to listen to sweet words.

Jango must sense it. His thoughts go from heated to a flickering warmth, flares of concern rising. He doesn’t have the Force, that sixth sense Anakin has, but he has a rather uncanny ability to read people. He can’t move his arms, not while they’re still pinned under Anakin’s knees, but he can raise his forearms. His hands close on the underside of the younger man’s thighs, grounding him and warm despite the gloves.

“Cyare?”

“A slave army, Jango. You helped create a slave army. Out of your own kids. How could you?”

And that’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it? Jango had been a slave. He knew what kind of life it was. He’d taken any contract on slavers he could find once he was freed. He went so far as to take all contracts on Anakin’s life, before even meeting him, just to stop other bounty hunters from attempting to kill the ex-slave and ending his plans for several slave revolts all around the galaxy. And still, he went along with a cloning project for an army, knowing perfectly well what it would imply for his sons.

Jango smiles at him, small and bitter but vicious, teeth bared in victory.

“They’re not mine.”

“Only because you signed off your rights to them to the Republic!”

“No,” Jango counters with a mischievous glint in his eyes, the smugness returning to his signature. “They’re not mine because they’re yours.”

Anakin's mind goes blank.

“What.”

The Mando’s smug chuckle reverberates through his chest and up into Anakin’s. His vicious joy at getting one over the Kaminoans curls around the younger man like a warm blanket.

“When the Kaminii made me sign the custody papers a few years ago, I falsified them behind their backs. Put your name instead of the Republic’s. They’re yours.”

Anakin feels breathless, hot and cold at the same time. The world stands on the edge of a precipice, it wobbles but doesn’t fall over yet. The same sensations as the first time he encountered Jango.

  
-_-_-_-_-_-_-

The bounty hunter had attacked him in the middle of the desert, using an outcropping of rocks and the shade they provided as a sniper’s nest. Anakin hadn’t known it at the time but Jango hadn’t been doing his very best to kill him, just putting up the facade.

The hunter had still wanted to make it appear like he wanted to off the ex-slave, so he’d been targeting his leg - not the shoulder or arms, too close to the chest to risk it. He hadn’t expected the younger man to kriffing _somersault_ over the blaster shot before zeroing on him with pinpoint accuracy. That hadn’t stopped him from shooting again and again, deliberately missing on purpose, even when it became clear the Tatooinian wouldn’t be struck. The shots targeting the ground were entirely ignored where those that could have clipped him were artfully avoided.

And then, to Jango’s surprise and annoyance, Anakin had bounded up the side of the cliff he was perched on and came at him fists flying. The hunter hadn’t been prepared for a face-to-face, expecting to take a few potshots at the revolutionist and be on his way within minutes.

Still, being taken aback by his target’s willingness to fist-fight him didn’t mean he was unprepared for it. Surely, him being in full armour against unprotected flesh is going to give him the advantage, right?

No, no it doesn’t. Jango, face bloody and ribs bruised had been charmed on the spot.

  
  


Not so much for Anakin, who had been stressing over his unseen stalker for the better part of three days - despite not feeling anything overly threatening - and had had to cancel his mom’s birthday party to not put his family in potential danger. He’d felt hot and cold at the same time, for the whole day, and everything had seemed like the world was standing on the edge of a precipice. That first shot had been a blow, a break in the balance, a leap of faith.

After some hurried explanations - Anakin was going for the kill while Jango wasn’t - to which he listened with annoyance, he’d agreed reluctantly to have his head targeted on the regular by an unknown. His mother hadn’t been pleased at the news. To be fair, neither had been Anakin.

At least at the beginning.

After a while, though, the attempts on his life by the famous bounty hunter Jango Fett had become a game and, sometimes, the only reason why he didn’t go insane with all the political juggling he’d had to do to establish himself as the person in charge.

  
  


The pattern had continued for a while, Jango making false attempts on Anakin’s life to build up his reputation as unkillable while also discouraging other hunters from taking up the bounty by making it look like Jango had a grudge against Anakin. Also, if _Jango_ was having difficulties, what hope did those newbies have to kill the man?

Of course, it had still led to some hunters going after the Tatooinian in an attempt to gain favour from the Mando. Anakin hadn’t felt bad putting them down which had two interesting side-effects. One, it made him appear like some untouchable warrior and two, it built up Jango’s reputation as the best of the best even more.

Meanwhile, the hunter had used their altercations to pass on messages and much-needed intelligence, about safe planets and clinics, about slavers or escaped slaves and their possible locations for extraction. Anakin had returned the favour by forwarding information on different high-paying bounties hiding on Tatooine. Little by little they had built a rapport.

Until the day Jango brought a baby with him.

Boba means Lucky in Mando’a.

In the whispered, secret slave language Bo’ulba means Free Spirit.

Anakin had looked into Jango’s eyes and then at the back of his neck where scars were slowly fading and _knew_. He’d blessed Boba under the light of Tatooine’s twin suns with the last drop of the night’s moisture and watched with father and son as the suns rose for a new day.

Later, when the newborn had been put down for a nap in a hover-cradle, Anakin had introduced Jango to his mother.

  
-_-_-_-_-_-_-  
  


Anakin breaths slow and long.

The world continues to wobble next to the edge. He’s cold and warm all over.

He takes another breath and a leap of faith.

The stars are set ablaze.

In a move that is sure to give them both a crick in the neck, he bends his head and kisses Jango.

He could do without the smugness permeating the air, though. Or Artoo beeping from his corner about weird organics’ courting customs.

“I’m still cross with you.”

“I know, cyare, I know.”

  
-_-_-_-_-_-_-

It’s raining out-of-season on Tatooine. It’s a miracle, the harbinger of hope and renewal.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to appease your sweetheart, give him children.  
> Meanwhile, Shmi is dotting on Boba.  
> Anakin is going to sue the Republic for enslaving his sons.  
> And Jango spent the better part of those two years extracting the clones unsuited for war/too injured to continue fighting and escorting them to safety. All the while collecting dirt on Dooku and his master. Also, because of his relationship with Anakin (being with someone who understands where you come from and still willing to call you out on your bullshit is good for the soul) he was more involved in the clones' upbringing, not at all the distant or uncaring figure he was in canon.  
> Happy Ending for everyone!
> 
> Also, Bittodeath on AO3 created a JangAni Discord server!


End file.
